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But the purely accidental resemblance of his name to that of the Greek deity Herakles, and the manifest identity of the Cacus-myth with the story of the victory of Herakles over Geryon, led to the substitution of Hercules for the original hero of the legend, who was none other than Jupiter, called by his Sabine name Sancus.
His house, which stood on the Palatine hill, they commanded to be razed to the ground, and his effects to be devoted to Semo Sancus. With the money produced by the sale of them, brazen globes were formed, and placed in the chapel of Sancus, opposite to the temple of Quirinus.
The existence of documents of the regal period is sufficiently attested; such was the special treaty between Rome and Gabii, which was concluded by a king Tarquinius and probably not by the last of that name, and which, written on the skin of the bullock sacrificed on the occasion, was preserved in the temple of Sancus on the Quirinal, which was rich in antiquities and probably escaped the conflagration of the Gauls; and such was the alliance which king Servius Tullius concluded with Latium, and which Dionysius saw on a copper tablet in the temple of Diana on the Aventine.
+802+. In the case of certain deities, as Volcanus, Neptunus, Mercurius, Sancus, a pronounced Roman development cannot be traced, partly because of the lack of full data, partly, in the case of Volcan, Neptune, and Mercury, because of an early and complete identification with the Greek gods Hephaistos, Poseidon, and Hermes.
The existence of documents of the regal period is sufficiently attested; such was the special treaty between Rome and Gabii, which was concluded by a king Tarquinius and probably not by the last of that name, and which, written on the skin of the bullock sacrificed on the occasion, was preserved in the temple of Sancus on the Quirinal, which was rich in antiquities and probably escaped the conflagration of the Gauls; and such was the alliance which king Servius Tullius concluded with Latium, and which Dionysius saw on a copper tablet in the temple of Diana on the Aventine.
Along with this native development he was in later times more or less identified with Zeus. By his side stood the national deity Quirinus, who remained a local patron and never rose to large proportions. Related to him are Sancus and Dius Fidius, who represented some primitive conceptions similar to those belonging to his early form, but they did not develop into great gods.
Now Johannes Lydus informs us that, in Sabine, Sancus signified "the sky," a meaning which we have already seen to belong to the name Jupiter. The same substitution of the Greek hero for the Roman divinity led to the alteration of the name of the demon overcome by his thunderbolts.
When the Quirinal is called -collis agonalis-, "hill of sacrifice," it is so designated merely as the centre of the religious rites of the Hill-Romans. Mars quirinus, Sol, Salus, Flora, Semo Sancus or Deus fidius were doubtless Sabine, but they were also Latin, divinities, formed evidently during the epoch when Latins and Sabines still lived undivided.
When the Quirinal is called -collis agonalis-, "hill of sacrifice," it is so designated merely as the centre of the religious rites of the Hill-Romans. Mars quirinus, Sol, Salus, Flora, Semo Sancus or Deus fidius were doubtless Sabine, but they were also Latin, divinities, formed evidently during the epoch when Latins and Sabines still lived undivided.
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